‘Last Night Was Just Hell’: Father Describes Death of Girl, 11, During Hurricane Michael

Sarah Radney, 11, went to visit her grandparents in southwestern Georgia this week while she and her siblings were on fall break. But there was a hurricane coming — Hurricane Michael — and Sarah’s father, Roy Radney, could not help but be worried.

Mr. Radney, 37, said he had told his father — Sarah’s grandfather — that he should consider leaving, but his father had reassured him: Modular homes like his were built to withstand 150-mile-per-hour winds.

So Mr. Radney relented, and decided he would call to check in at least once every hour, and sometimes every 15 minutes, on Wednesday. Everything was fine at first, he said; family members would send him photos of trees falling down around the home, which at least initially was “a sight to see,” Mr. Radney said.

“Everyone was in good moods,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday night.

“They were supposed to come home this morning,” Mr. Radney said of his children. “But that was before we knew Michael was going to be as bad as it was.”

Sarah was killed when strong winds from the storm tore away a carport and sent it hurtling into the modular home she was in, officials said. The girl is one of at least six people whose deaths have been attributed to the storm.

“She was sitting right next to her grandmother,” said Chad Smith, the coroner of Seminole County, Ga., who described the death as a “horrible accident.”

Mr. Radney cannot recall exactly when he got a call from his brother with the news of what had happened; he thinks it was around 4 p.m. Wednesday, but acknowledged that much of the last day or two had been a blur. The reception was bad, so Mr. Radney could not quite make out what his brother was saying. But he could tell he was crying.

“When I finally got through and spoke to my mom, my mom said Sarah had been hit in the head,” Mr. Radney said.

The wind, he was told, had lifted up a portable carport that had been behind the house and thrust it toward the home such that one of its legs burst through “the ceiling or the window, I’m not sure which,” Mr. Radney said. It struck both Sarah and Mr. Radney’s mother; his mother’s lung was punctured, her rib broken; the carport struck Sarah on the head, leaving her gasping for air for 45 minutes to an hour.

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Roy Radney and Sarah, right, in a family photo.

As Sarah suffered, the storm got worse and worse, Mr. Radney said, and cellphone reception got spottier and spottier. Sometimes he would call and could get only a word or two in — or a single question: “Was she still breathing?”

“Last night was just hell,” said Mr. Radney, who lives in Cairo, Ga. “I’m an hour and a quarter away, and my daughter’s dying, and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t think of anything that is more related to hell than that.”

Then, finally, Mr. Radney and his wife got through again, and his father told Mr. Radney’s wife that Sarah had died.

It took hours — perhaps as many as six — for emergency medical workers to cut through enough trees to get to the home, Mr. Radney said, so there was “no chance” of Sarah being saved.

Mr. Radney’s 12-year-old son — Sarah was one of six children — was also at his grandparents’ house, and “saw the whole thing,” he added.

“I want people to know, man, when they say, ‘Get out of your house’ — leave your house, listen to them,” he said. “When they say, ‘No first responder is going to be able to get to you’ — they’re not joking.”

Even his mother, who Mr. Radney said was recovering, had had to walk hundreds of yards to get to the emergency responders who ultimately helped her. His parents’ home, he said, was in a remote part of Seminole County, 20 miles from the nearest hospital.

A relative has set up a GoFundMe page in hopes of raising money for the family.

Sarah was a sixth grader and an honors student, her father said, and was in the band and loved to act. Mr. Radney, who works as a welder, has had to travel a lot for his job, and recalled how much he would enjoy randomly receiving videos of her dancing or singing. Sarah, he said, had recently joined her school’s drama club and was part of a “Hamlet” remake called “Piglet.”